From Green Bay to Rangoon: US flacks spread goodwill for Burma's junta.

• Author: Vest, Jason
• Position: Myanmar's attempts people-to-people diplomacy with ill-informed Americans

One of the best moments in Inherit the Wind comes when defense attorney Henry Drummond, having established that his nemesis Matthew Harrison Brady has never taken an interest in learning anything beyond what is written in the Bible, looks at Brady and remarks: "It frightens me to think of the state of learning in the world if everyone had your driving curiosity." One can only imagine what Drummond would say to Paul Jadin, mayor of Green Bay, Wisconsin, regarding Jadin's unique view of human rights.

This spring Paul Jadin received a key to the city of Rangoon, the capital of Burma also known as Myanmar, a military dictatorship with an abysmal human-rights record. While the mayors of a half-dozen U.S. cities and one state governor have signed laws aimed at curtailing corporate involvement there, Jadin seems to have no idea what Burma's government is like. Nor does this ignorance particularly trouble him.

When readers of the Green Bay Press Gazette opened their papers one May morning, some were surprised to find an article commemorating Jadin's acceptance of the key, delivered to him by one Larry Heyerman. A sixty-two-year-old construction-company owner and former Army paratrooper, Heyerman had gone to Burma as part of a tour sponsored by Friendship Airborne, a group that sells travel packages to retired military paratroopers. The travel packages include jumps with foreign airborne units.

Before departing the United States for two days of jumps with members of the Burmese military--which has a documented history of enslaving, imprisoning, and executing civilians, particularly those with democratic tendencies--Heyerman asked Jadin for a letter of introduction to Rangoon's mayor. Not only did Jadin instruct his deputy, David Mennig, to draft the letter, he went Heyerman one better. Jadin gave him a Green Bay key to pass on to U Ko Lay, Rangoon's junta-installed administrator.

Lay returned the favor and, according to the article, Jadin couldn't have been happier with Heyerman's trip, which, in addition to the key, netted the mayor a cheroot cigar. "[Trips like this] always create opportunities," the Press Gazette quoted Jadin as saying. "We want to open the door to international business markets."

I asked deputy mayor Mennig if the city of Green Bay really wanted to do business with such an unsavory government.

"I was not aware" of the human-rights violations, said Mennig. "But look, an exchange like this has nothing to do with politics. We don't know anything about other individual governments. It really doesn't affect the kind of exchange that occurred."

Burma activists were astounded by Green Bay's stance.

"Do your homework, for God's sake. Right now, investment in Burma is a major political issue!" says Simon Billenness, Asian specialist with the Boston-based Franklin Research and Development (a socially responsible investment firm), on hearing Mennig's comments. "This is a guy who has obviously done no homework and blunders into a country, thinking he's doing a nice thing when in reality he's lending aid to a brutal junta."

Not that it's that big a deal. A junta can only get so much public-relations mileage out of Green Bay, Wisconsin. But in recent years, the military leadership of Burma--in conjunction with U.S. corporations and elements of the U.S. government--has gone to great lengths to influence both American public opinion and American legislators.

Using shadowy lobbyists, questionable public-relations consultants, and self-interested American and Burmese private citizens, the State Law and Order...